


Guardian Angel

by nanye_i_arato_angaina



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Dean Winchester, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-16 19:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanye_i_arato_angaina/pseuds/nanye_i_arato_angaina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean sold his soul for Sam's life and prepared to go hell for it. He gets a new job from a blue-eyed angel instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> And the award for "least creative title" goes to...
> 
> This one's to deanwinchestersheart on tumblr for getting the idea stuck in my head.
> 
> Edit: this has now been edited.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition.”

Dean supposed that meant Hell, and given that he didn’t remember anything between being shredded by hellhounds and standing in the white, Matrix-like space he stood in now, except for a vague, terrifying feeling like falling, or maybe flying, he thought he should at least listen to the guy. The speaker was indistinct and far off, but as he moved closer he came into focus. At first glance he looked ordinary, in a suit and trench coat, like a tax accountant or something, but the longer Dean looked at him, the more out of the ordinary he appeared. Dean wasn’t sure if he was in his body or some kind of dream state, but his hunter’s instincts were still blaring at him that the man- the thing, whatever it was- was very powerful. There was something moving in the air behind him, but Dean couldn’t tell what it was, no matter how hard he looked, so he focused on the face while he spoke.

“Thanks for that. I guess. What happened? And, you know, how?”

“When a human makes a deal for another, he is given the option of becoming that person’s guardian angel. Heaven became aware of you the moment that you sold your soul to save your brother’s life, but we could not interfere until the moment of your death. When the time came, I followed your soul as it was dragged to Hell, and the instant you entered that realm- thus fulfilling your terms of the deal- I removed you from the control of the demons and brought you here.”

His voice was deep, deeper than should be natural, and his eyes were too blue to be real.

“So, uh, I guess that makes you an…” Dean trailed off, unable to complete the sentence.

“I am Castiel. I’m an angel of the Lord.”

Well how’s that for a plot twist? Dean thought, trying to keep his knees from buckling and suddenly realizing that it was two enormous wings that were shifting around behind Castiel, sort of white like their surroundings but mostly invisible, though Dean thought he could hear the rustling they were making. “And Sam? Did he get away from Lilith?”

Castiel stared at him blankly for a moment.

“Yes,” he said finally, and Dean realized that he had been looking at something that wasn’t here, and now that he knew that Sam was alive, more of his questions spilled out.

“And because I sold my soul for him, I’m now his guardian angel? Do you give everyone that choice? Am I going to have to lug big-ass wings everywhere? When do I get to see Sammy?”

The angel answered each of his questions in turn- though he did so without running his words all together.

“Should you choose to be, yes, you will be the guardian angel of Samuel Winchester until the moment of his death, whereupon you will be released to Heaven permanently.

"Everyone who sells his soul to save another is given this decision; it is one of the few ways Heaven can currently undermine the power of Hell on Earth.

"The wings and the halo that are the mark of an angel, no matter the rank, are not generally visible to humans, and that includes guardian angels who are former humans. Your wings will be used for flight, regardless of whether or not they can be seen, and can be manifested on the mortal plane in times of emergency.

"You will have to complete an orientation and training session before you can leave Heaven, and that will appear to you to take anywhere from several months to a year, depending on how quickly you move through it, but only a few days at most will have passed on Earth. One of my brothers has been assigned as a temporary guardian until you make your decision, and, should you agree, until your return. But before you get started, there is someone who would like to speak to you.”

Dean was fairly sure that being Sam’s guardian angel would involve doing the same thing he’d been doing since he was four, only with added angel powers, so the choice didn’t take much thought, but before he could tell Castiel yes, the angel had disappeared. In his place stood a much more familiar man.

“Dad?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I really wanted to end chapter 1 where I did, and for that conversation to happen, but I really don’t think I can write that conversation, so there’s a kind of after-the-fact description that I don’t totally dislike.

Dean was torn: on one hand, it was awesome to get to see his dad again, but on the other, he’d been there the whole time, ever since he’d sold his soul for Dean the way Dean just had for Sam, and had never once during the whole two years given him so much as a “hey, now I’m your guardian angel” and just let them think he was dead. He’d said that he was trying to let Dean do his own thing, and maybe Dean would be grateful for that later, but currently he was just really pissed.

“When you got caught by that Trickster, though, at the Mystery Spot, I did start dropping in when he kept killing you but you never remembered and I tried going directly after the Trickster instead but he always stayed one step ahead of me, even when I pulled out all the guardian-angelic stops. Heaven, of course, couldn’t get directly involved, but Michael did say that it was more powerful than it should have been, when I finally asked him, but then it was Wednesday finally, and he disappeared,” John had said, and while Dean was somewhat mollified by the fact his father had tried to help in a way Dean could see at least once, he was reminded that that thing was still running around handing out “just desserts” and was apparently even more powerful than he should be, and that he’d already had Sam in his sights. So he was going to put off working on forgiving his father- who was living happily with Mary in their own little slice of Heaven, now that Dean now longer needed a guardian angel- and focus on this angel training camp thing so he could get back to Sammy.

If he could find Castiel and figure out how to do that, that is.

He’d tried yelling, to no avail, and then looked aimlessly around the seemingly-infinite white space for ideas.

This is stupid, he thought when he’d had the one that should have been obvious.

“Okay, here goes.” He took another unnecessary deep breath. “Dear Castiel, who is probably in Heaven, I pray with the utmost respect that you get your feathery ass back here and tell me what I have to do to get back to Sam, because I’m agreeing to this guardian angel thing.”

This is really stupid, he thought again when there was no immediate answer.

There was a rush of wind that smelled like sulfur that came from somewhere behind him, and he whirled. He came face to face with Castiel, who had a silvery blade one moment and then it was gone with no apparent movement between.

“I apologize. There was a minor demon uprising, and my presence was required. It has been happening more often of late, and it may interfere with your orientation, though Gabriel will continue to watch over your brother in your absence.”

Dean took a step back before speaking, so that they were no longer almost nose to nose. In doing so, he noticed that Castiel did, in fact, look like he’d been fighting, his clothes ruffled and dotted here and there with something dark and liquid.

“Okay, I don’t know much about angels, but I’m fairly sure that Michael and Gabriel are two of the pretty important ones. So why are they interested in us Winchesters?”

“Partly because most of the lower-ranked angels are not capable of both fighting against demons with their garrisons and watching over specific humans; a very small part because of what day of the week you made your deals; and mostly because you Winchesters have proven themselves to be a remarkable group of people. There are very few people who make selfless deals with demons, and fewer still who offer their eternal soul for another’s life. So to find two such deals made by two in so close relation, and so close chronologically, is remarkable.” The angel gave him a piercing look, blue eyes laser-focused on his own green ones as if looking deep inside him, and for all he knew, he was.

“If you wish to proceed,” -Dean nodded readily- “the first step is very simple.”

And Castiel had him swear an oath that he would, first and foremost, protect Sam with everything he had- nothing new there- but also that he would submit to the authority of Heaven for the duration of his guardianship, insofar as any orders he was given didn’t conflict with protecting his charge. There were a lot of big, fancy words, and Dean wished for a moment that he had his sort of lawyer brother to pick out the fine print before he agreed, but as long as Sam was his first priority, he didn’t think it could go too wrong, so he repeated after the angel.

When they were done, Castiel gripped his shoulders in a way that felt bizarrely familiar until Dean remembered that he had had to pull him up from Hell, and that that had probably required some kind of physical contact. He wondered where they were going now that required the same grip, until something exploded behind him and he would have fallen over, if Castiel hadn’t been supporting him. It took him longer than he cared to admit to figure out that the explosion, the pull on his back like a bad sunburn, and the warmth on the top of his head were all connected.

“Dude. I have a halo?” he asked incredulously, lifting a hand and feeling around over his head.

“It is the mark of your rank, but cannot be seen or felt by humans.”

Dean supposed that was why he didn’t actually feel anything up there except a spot of warmth, like sunlight. He flexed the muscles in his back, and there was an answering flick of mostly invisible wings. He was glad that Castiel was still holding onto him, because he felt extremely unbalanced, and thought that maybe angelic orientation might be a good idea if he wanted to do more with Sam then follow him around tripping and banging into things.

“Your wings are more often manifested here in Heaven than on Earth, though you will be taught to move both with and without them physically there. What they look like is based on both your perception of what they should look like, and the perception of others around you. It is very likely that you see my wings differently than I see them, and vice versa. They, too, reflect your rank, though it is possible to influence them enough to alter them. It is not possible to do so with your halo, however, so it would be unwise to do so, as the lie would be clear to any angel who looked at you, because your halo cannot be changed.”

Dean thought about it for a moment, and then remembered the hawks he saw flying sometimes, moving through the air effortlessly, and imagined wings like theirs, big and sturdy and unlikely to let him fall. His brain seemed to have adjusted to a third pair of limbs, and he curled them around front where he could see them. They were large and brown and a little fluffy, and they flung out wide automatically to keep him upright when Castiel let him go, eight or nine feet of his own flesh and bone and feathers arching up and out of either side of him.

“Awesome,” he said, lowering his arms that he’d also spread wide out of habit but leaving the wings- his wings- flared. He looked more carefully at the angel’s, now that he knew how they worked, and imagined them there. But he couldn’t really see them anyway, because they blended in with the near-blinding white of their surroundings, and decided that they would probably look better in the same almost-black as his hair. And then they were, and they stood out starkly. They were broader and longer than his, but Dean figured that probably had to do with that rank thing, since Castiel was an actual angel-angel instead of whatever human-angel hybrid thing he was.

“Awesome,” he repeated, and grinned broadly for the first time in far too long.


	3. Chapter 3

Fortunately, Dean discovered after Castiel had explained the basics and they’d set off to a different part of Heaven, angel flying really didn’t feel anything like human flying. Physical flight was possible, he’d said, but being able to instantaneously appear where ever was needed was much more convenient, and considerably easier. So it was with just a little stumble that Dean reappeared and thus began his first day as a guardian angel-in-training.

-

There had been three more demon incursions that the proper angels had taken time off to deal with, and it was hard to judge time passing when sleeping and eating and everything were unnecessary, but Dean was fairly sure that it had been closer to the longer end of the time period that Castiel had estimated. But apparently a year in Heaven was about three days on Earth, and Gabriel had been telling Castiel to tell Dean what his brother had been up to during those few days, so while Dean was eager to get back to him, he wasn’t worried about his safety. Much. There had been some more official oath-swearing, Dean had had the blade that he’d spent a lot of time crafting presented to him, now engraved with special Enochian sigils, and the warmth above his head had burned hot enough that Dean could actually almost feel the halo there for a moment, and then he was an official guardian angel.

Cas, as the angel who pulled Dean from Hell, was the one who escorted him back to his brother and suggested to him that appearing in Sam’s dreams before appearing in real life might freak him out less. There wasn’t really anything by way of a goodbye between the two angels, as Dean was to report back in every now and then to make sure that both human and angel were adjusting to their new relationship, so it wasn’t really goodbye. He’d also progressed far enough at the time of the last altercation with the demons that he’d been allowed to fight, and so now agreed to do so again- should Sam be safe enough to be left alone when he was needed.

So without further ado, Dean was standing alone by his little brother, who was completely dead to the world in the room that he’d been sleeping in for as long as they’d been staying at Bobby’s house. He’d been allowed brief glances when they’d been on Earth, practicing moving with the laws of physics, but this was the first time he’d been able to really examine his brother. He looked like hell, and Dean wasn’t too surprised to find that he’d drunk himself into unconsciousness. But there was no mark of a demon’s deal on his soul, so either Bobby had kept him from that, or he was just smarter than Dean.

“Okay, Sammy, let’s do this thing.”

Sam’s dreams were, unsurprisingly, nightmares, and when Dean edited himself into them, he edited the hellhounds out. And then decided that the house that Lilith had been terrorizing was just as bad, and moved them both to a little beach they’d gotten to spend the day at while their dad had dealt with a ghost that was haunting a little town in Oregon. It had been years since they’d been, but Sam apparently recognized it as a better memory and sighed a little in relief before sinking down to sit in the sand. Dean plopped down beside him with an enthusiastic “Heya, Sammy.”

His brother froze.

“Dean?” he asked warily. “You aren’t- this isn’t the part where you start blaming me for everything again, is it?”

“What? Is dream-me really that much of a dick?” Dean was maybe forcing the levity a bit much, but his brother really needed to cheer up and stop making that woe-is-me face, because it wasn’t like he’d died on purpose, and Dean was the one who’d made the deal. Sam just nodded a bit. Dean sighed.

“Okay, this is the part where I tell you something, you don’t believe me, and then you wake up and I prove you right. So just listen for a minute. You probably know more about angels than I did, but I don’t think there’s much lore about guardian angels.” And Dean explained the whole thing the way Cas had explained it to him, if less eloquently, and Sam stayed quiet.

“So here I am, appearing to you in a dream so that when you wake up and find me there, you don’t freak and try and stab me or something. Not that it would do anything, but still. It’s bizarre.”

Sam just stared at him in disbelief, and that was exactly how he’d expected him to respond. The lack of Hell had been what had convinced him so quickly that Cas had been telling the truth, but before Dean could think of anything else to convince his brother, Sam was yanked back into awareness and the dream dissolved.

Bobby was shaking Sam awake, and Dean stayed invisible to avoid being shot with the shotgun he was holding. He caught a whiff of sulfur then, and moved outside Bobby’s house. Four demons were trying to sneak in, moving through the stacks of junk cars in a way that might have fooled humans, but not angels- and apparently not whatever perimeter alarm Bobby had set up. He and Sam reached the door at about the same time the demons ran out of cars to hide behind and had to move into open space. Dean dropped into visibility right in front of the two demons in front and slapped a hand to each of their foreheads, exorcising the demons and sending their meatsuits into unconsciousness. The other two tried to smoke out, but Dean recited one of the Enochian exorcisms that he’d been glad to learn were much shorter than their Latin equivalents. A quick poke into one of the human’s head told Dean that all four of them had been drinking together before being possessed by demons, and he planted the idea that they’d staggered back to the car and passed out before sending back to the car, one at a time.

When he was done with that, he finally let himself look up at Sam and Bobby, who were standing on the back porch, looking at him in shock, and any other time he would have been thrilled to put that look on the older man’s face, but at the moment, he was more conscious of the guns pointed at him.

“I did tell you that I’d be there when you woke up, and that you wouldn’t believe me, ” he called to Sam, not moving closer- it didn’t hurt, exactly, getting shot, but it wasn’t any fun either. Bobby turned to look at Sam without letting Dean out of his peripheral vision.

“What’s he talking about?”

“Before you woke me up, I was dreaming that Dean was telling me he was my guardian angel, since he’d sold his soul to save my life, but it was just a dream, he can’t be here, we burned his body and-”

“If you’d like, I could come over there and you can do the holy water and everything- wait. I’ve got one better.” Dean mentally kicked himself for not thinking of it right away, and focused on bringing his wings into the material plane. He spread them wide, and made a mental note to never do this inside. “Like Sam said, I died to save him, and now it’s my job to keep on saving him.” Sam and Bobby just stared at him. Dean took a cautious step forward. They both fired- reflexively, he hoped. Bobby’s round caught him full in the chest, which wasn’t a problem, but Sam’s shot went wide and- “Sonuvabitch! Ow!” and he shunted his wings back into the metaphysical plane where they usually stayed, and now he knew why, because that actually hurt. “Dammit, Sam!”

“Dean?” Sam asked, and his voice was quietly hopeful.

“Yes,” Dean said, exasperatedly, but didn’t move any closer. Sam did, cautiously, leaving the porch as Bobby watched them both warily, and stopped just out of arm’s reach of Dean. The hell with it, Dean thought, and took a couple giant steps to wrap his arms around his little brother, who flinched and stiffened, but apparently realized that it wasn’t an attack, and hugged him back. And damn he had missed his little brother.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean had been dead a grand total of three days from Sam’s point of view, but he’d been back for twice that before they even left Bobby’s. Sam barely let Dean out of his sight during that time, and since Sam and Bobby hadn’t done very much while he’d been gone, Dean did a lot of the talking, about meeting Dad again, and about Cas, and about other angels, and Heaven, and fighting demons and the apocalypse they’d been trying to kick start early since sometime in the 70s.

Exactly a week since he’d made his dramatic reentrance, the two Winchesters were flipping through the ten channels that the rabbit ears on Bobby’s television were currently picking up when the county news anchor mentioned a series of inexplicable deaths. Sam got his “A case!” face, but it was fleeting as he glanced worriedly at Dean. Dean grinned back at him.

“Come on, Sammy. It’s barely a half an hour drive from here, and if it gets out of control, we can skedaddle out of there via angel airway,” Dean wheedled, but before he could make any more headway, Bobby’s voice reached them from the other room.

“Of course, Sheriff Mills. I’ll get my best people right on it.” His voice was louder than the phone call required, and very pointed. Dean grinned wider at his brother, who sighed but stood up from the couch.

“Oh, come on, Sam. You haven’t even seen what I can do with my awesome angel powers. Except those demons, but four demons now is like one little ghost then. I didn’t even need to get out my sword- which is pretty awesome, by the way.” Sam finally cracked a smile at that, which Dean appreciated, but when, about fifteen minutes later, they were loading into the Impala, Dean did not appreciate the way Sam laughed at him for greeting his baby.

“Bitch,” he said, putting the car in gear.

“Jerk.”

-

Even though it had been months since he’d been hunting as a human being, years of lying to cops made it weird to be telling Sheriff Mills the truth, but apparently Bobby had helped her get rid of a vengeful spirit a while back, and now she was in on the whole “nasty creatures that will kill you horribly” thing. They didn’t mention the part about Dean dying and becoming an angel, though, as it wasn’t relevant. Nobody even looked at them twice after the sheriff introduced them as specialists from the FBI, and the free reign they now had of the entire station made Dean think that maybe there was something for having real cops on their side.

Dean wasn’t sure how Sam managed to keep the “tell me all your problems because I am unassuming and also nice” act up when he was nine feet tall and in his monkey suit, but he managed to get every single one of the eyewitness to tell them exactly what they saw and not leave out the “unbelievable” stuff, while Dean sat next to him, reading their truthfulness and trying not to fidget. Maybe they should have gone to the grocery store or something first for Dean’s first time among large numbers of humans in over a year, but that hadn’t even occurred to him and they were already here. The few times they’d come to Earth had been to learn to hunt monsters the angel way, and that didn’t generally involve talking to people. But Dean kept track of the conversations anyway, and was fairly sure he knew what they were dealing with by the end of them. Sam called Bobby anyway, just to be sure, and the angel and the older hunter agreed that it sounded like witches.

It was a whole hell of a lot easier to kill them when you could actually get close enough to do so because angel mojo trumped witch spells, and Sam’s aim was a lot better than all three of the witches combined, which meant Dean could focus more on getting the witches than keeping Sam from getting hit. It was only after they’d been ganked that Dean remembered that he was supposed to let his higher-ups know about run-ins with witches as well as demons. Perfect angelic recall only helped if you weren’t already thinking about something else.

The look on the other two hunters’ faces when Cas appeared in Bobby’s living room after a silent call from Dean was priceless.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean drawled, trying and failing miserably to not sound so smug at their surprise. “This is my brother Sam, and Bobby.”

“Hello Dean, Sam, Bobby,” Castiel said, and Dean was so used to his angelic voice that even his human voice sounded high, as low and gravely as it sounded to human ears. It was remarkably difficult to surprise Bobby for long, so by the time Dean was done giving his brief and mostly unnecessary verbal rundown of what had happened with the witches- who had been completely insane- the older hunter was examining the angel rather than staring at him in something that was like shock and awe, like Sam still was.

“Really, Sam? Was I not angel enough to warrant creepy staring?” Dean asked, but Cas was staring right back- which was very in character for him.

“It’s an honor, really,” Sam said eventually, ignoring Dean’s comment and holding out his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“And I, you, Sam Winchester,” the angel replied, not so much as shaking his hand as holding it between his own two. “The boy with the demon blood, manipulated by Hell since before birth, and yet still fighting on the side of Heaven.”

That Sam didn’t know what to make of that pronouncement was obvious.

Dean didn’t want this to somehow end up as a conversation about feelings, so he changed the subject.

“As today proved to Mr. Worrywart over there that we are both fine to go put hunting again, you can put us back in your rotation of people who are available to get the bad guys without breaking any angel rules.”

“Of course, Dean,” Cas said, and disappeared between one blink and the next.

“Angels have rules about who can kill people?” Sam asked after a beat.

“Sort of. It’s a non-interference kind of thing, letting the humans live their own way, which obviously the demons ignore. But Heaven’s come up with a bunch of loopholes. They can fight off a direct assault- you’d think that demons would be smart enough to not attack Heaven directly, but they do it anyway- and there’s the sacrificing-yourself-for-another clause in demon deals, which is a double whammy, as the deal maker doesn’t stay in Hell and is given angel powers with which to protect his charge from any kind of harm, and if said charge just happens to have regular run-ins with demons who want him for some nefarious purpose, then his guardian angel has no other choice but to smite anything and everything that would take him down that path. And anyway, it’s not like I haven’t been doing this since I was four. So it’s a win for the good guys all around.”

“Huh,” was Sam’s only reply.


	5. Chapter 5

Life went back to close to what Sam and Dean knew as normal. There was a small increase of demon attacks- one demon had claimed to be Ruby and then tried to convince them that she was on their side. But demons in meatsuits lied an awful lot like humans did, so Dean stabbed her with the knife she’d been carrying. And it may have been Ruby wearing a different woman, but a demon was a demon was a demon, and the urge to kill every last one of them was even stronger now. He handed her knife to Sam after mojoing it clean, as it was just as effective against demons as his own blade was.

Said angelic blade was tried against vampires when they’d run into what was left of the group they’d taken the Colt back from, years ago now, and there had been more of them than expected. Dean had been neglecting his machete, so when he had to use his now super human strength on the first vamp, he didn’t bother mojoing it sharp and dropped it. He sliced through vampire neck after vampire neck with his angel blade like butter, appearing behind the next one before the head of the previous one had even hit the ground.

Cas visited occasionally, too, when there was anything demon-related, though Sam suspected that Dean liked the angel hanging around and called him to Earth more often than was strictly necessary. Which, hey, he couldn’t exactly say anything against, as the guy had pulled his brother out of Hell. That had to create some kind of bond between the two of them. Not to mention the year in heaven-time they’d spent together that corresponded with the three worst days of Sam’s life. But it was because of Cas that he had Dean back, so he really wasn’t complaining. And Dean could use another person he trusted around, as there were very few people he did.

It was weeks of normal hunts before the obligations that Dean had to heaven beyond reporting demons came calling. Dean got to introduce Sam to Cas’ (and his own by extension) garrison leader Anna, and the redheaded angel seemed oddly fascinated by his brother, despite the demon blood that he knew all the angels could see. Uriel really couldn’t care less about any human, even one who was now also technically an angel, and so afforded Sam the same amount of attention Dean usually afforded the speed limit on the freeway.

As odd as it was to be having a strategic meeting in one of the cheap motels the Winchesters were used to, it was good to learn that the angels valued his input enough to actually have the meeting here instead of having the meeting in Heaven and excluding him because he couldn’t leave Sam in danger, potential or otherwise. As good as his new angel senses were, demons were crafty, and had a tendency of playing nice just long enough to get you to trust them before they stabbed you in the back, and the higher level demons were remarkably good at pretending to be human.

"You’ve given us a unique advantage, Dean. Because Sam is a hunter, you are allowed to take out demons and their ilk in ways that most other angels would have to go against the rules to do, and that just attracts attention. Cherubs, of course, are allowed to inhabit earth for indefinite periods of time when on matchmaking duty, and are good for gathering information, but lack the subtlety for any kind of covert mission."

Dean knew all this, so he didn’t understand why Anna was explaining it all again until he realized that she was explaining for Sam, and then Dean wanted to slap himself for not thinking of that sooner, because Sam’s strategies tended to be the ones that ended up working better, not that he’d ever admit that to his brother, and he was glad that Anna had thought of it.

"So basically Dean’s heaven’s man behind the line?" Sam asked.

"To an extent. Earth is supposed to be neutral, not under the influence of angels or demons, but when the demons started crossing over, we had to do something, even though there wasn’t much we could do without breaking the rules ourselves. And don’t sell yourself short, Sam. I know you didn’t ask to become whatever the demons are trying to mold you into, but we can use that against them. Dean wasn’t supposed to be here to prevent you from going down that path, and that’s thrown a wrench in their plan. So they’ll try increasingly more desperate plans to get the ball back in their court, and eventually they’ll make a mistake big enough for us to figure out if it’s Azazel behind the whole thing, or if it’s bigger than that. And once we know that, we are that much closer to stopping whatever’s been going on for the last forty earth years.”

"So was there a specific covert mission you had in mind for us, or were you just getting us up to speed?" Dean asked.

"What do you know about Seals?" was Anna’s reply.

"I’m going to assume you don’t mean the really loud mammals that hang out on beaches."

"You’d think of them as locks on a door," Cas replied. "Open enough of them and the door can be opened. Only in this case, the door is isn’t to another room."

Dean would have paled if he’d still been human as he figured it out. Sam, apparently, could tell even though he didn’t.

"Dean?" he asked cautiously.

"Lucifer. The Seals are what’s keeping Lucifer’s Cage shut." Dean was hoping against hope that he’d misunderstood something, but Cas and Anna were wearing similarly grim faces. Sam just got that "what the hell" expression that meant he would need a bit to process what he’d just learned. Uriel looked the same as ever.

"It’s possible that Azazel and his demons are attempting to start the Apocalypse early by manipulating circumstances in ways they shouldn’t have been. Sam, it’s possible that they want you for breaking the last Seal by killing Lilith. But Dean wasn’t in Hell long enough to break the first Seal, and as you can imagine, not many Righteous Men end up in Hell, so it’s possible that there will be decades before the first Seal can be broken, and until that’s happened, none of the others can be broken, so it’s possible that eventually the demons will realize this and leave you alone. It’s not very likely, but hey. Optimism is a good thing, I’ve heard." Anna’s voice was almost falsely cheery, but she did sound sincere.

"So what exactly so you need us to do? Besides not get sent to Hell again, and not kill Lilith, even though the bitch deserves it."

"We need to find out if that is actually their end game, or if it’s a cover for something else. We need to know if there are other people that were manipulated like Sam and the others like him, other people that may be able to break Seals, and let them know what’s at stake. And we need to uncover the traitor in our midst."


	6. Chapter 6

"You mean one of the angels? How does an angel turn without everybody and their mother knowing? Seriously, Sam, there was like no concept of personal space whatsoever while I was up there."

"It is very, very difficult," Cas replied solemnly. "It is likely that the angel is of a rank that allowed him a considerable amount of power over other angels, and one that, like Anna, Uriel, and myself, has a legitimate reason to regularly leave the Host."

"I take it that’s my cue?" a sixth voice piped up. Sam jumped, as the owner of the voice was now standing right behind him, where there hadn’t been anybody a moment ago. Dean looked around his brother in confusion. He’d followed the angelic version of that voice into battle against demons while he’d been in heaven, but he’d never heard how it sounded on earth. Except maybe he had, because it sounded familiar.

“Gabriel? You’re the Trickster? But how is that- I mean, we killed you twice, and you killed me like three hundred times, and Cas said that you were watching out for Sam for the couple days that passed on Earth while I was in Heaven, and seriously, what the hell is going on here?”

“Gabriel?” Sam repeated, his voice cracking. “As in the archangel Gabriel?”

"That’s my name, don’t wear it out," was the aforementioned archangel’s reply. "And I was watching out for you two chuckleheads a bit during that year after Dean-o made his deal. I stuck Samsquatch here in the little Mystery Spot loop to keep him away from some very nasty demons on Earth while I had to beat the crap out of a whole platoon of other demons in Heaven. Killing Dean was to keep you from coming up with a way out, as the little alternate reality wasn’t as strong as it could have been, if I wasn’t fighting demons and sustaining a semi-autonomous double all at the same time."

Sam and Dean both started yelling at him at the same time, about being more direct and how killing people was at odds with keeping them safe. Gabriel stared at the both of them around a candy bar and let them yell.

"Feel better now, boys?" he asked a few minutes and a few Snickers later. “I was also hoping to desensitize Sam enough that he wouldn’t do anything stupid while he thought Dean was dead, if that makes you feel any better.” Dean harumphed and turned his back on the angel, but Sam just kept staring at him.

Anna gave Gabriel a look that Sam often gave Dean, the one that younger siblings gave their older siblings when they aren’t acting their age.

"Play nice, children. We’re all adults here, and some of us are much older than the others."

Gabriel stuck his tongue out at his sister in response, but snapped himself an armchair that barely fit in the small motel room that was already full of bodies, and fell quiet.

"Don’t mind me," he said after an awkward silence filled the room. "Go back to your brainstorming. Who do you guys think is selling us out?”

"Do you know how long ago they turned?" Sam asked.

"It hasn’t been all that along," Anna replied.

"Except ‘not that long’ can be like three or four decades human time, on account of the fact that angels are old as dirt," Dean interjected.

"Thirty or forty years?" Sam repeated. "As in about how long ago Mom made a deal with a demon?"

And hadn’t that been a fun conversation for Dean to have with Sam, but he couldn’t keep it to himself.

"So some angel decides that it’s almost time for the Apocalypse, gets some demons to do his dirty work, who royally screw up our lives, but it doesn’t work out quite as they’d planned because Cas pulled me out of Hell before the first Seal was broken, so they can’t break any others yet but they might find another Righteous Man with a brother with demon blood and use them to start the Apocalypse. Awesome."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually am not super fond of this chapter, and it's pretty much solely filler stuff, but hey. There's familiar faces in it at least.

The angel pow-wow didn’t last much longer after Dean’s summation of what, as they had no sudden ideas of who it might be, and all of the proper angels had other jobs to do. Before he left, though, Gabriel mentioned a business man a few cities over who was getting a bit big for his britches, and also working with a demon, if the Winchesters cared to accidentally stumble upon them and be forced to deal with the demon.

When they got to the office of a smarmy-looking man named Dick Roman, the man himself was sitting behind a large desk watching a demon in a devil’s trap while an older woman who was almost certainly a witch was holding a younger redheaded woman by the throat.

"Well, this looks cozy," Dean quipped as he opened the door. Sam kept an eye on the demon, but pointed his gun at the business man as he moved toward him. Dean vanished and reappeared behind the witch with his hand on her throat, and forced her to release the younger woman, who promptly sank to the floor but moved enough to sit against the wall, partially hidden by a large potted plant.

The witch gone, Dean moved to stand by his brother and turned to the demon and was wondering just what to do with him when another angel burst into the room, one he didn’t recognize at first. It wasn’t until the angel had mojoed the devil’s trap away and begun to worry over the demon that Dean recognized his voice.

“Aziraphale? What are you- I thought you were busy being the angel who’s been down here for so long that you’re not technically breaking rules, not swooping in and saving demons.”

Dean meant it suspiciously, but the blond angel simply turned to him with a smile on his face.

"Dean Winchester! My dear boy, I’ve heard only good things about you. And this must be your brother Sam." He turned to beam at the other Winchester, and then back to Dean. "It’s not every day another angel is added to our midst. And I promise you that this is the only demon I’d ever ‘swoop in’ to save, though you appear to have had it all covered. This is Crowley, and he’s as in charge of crossroad demons as one can be, though they don’t seem to actually do all that much listening to him."

"That’s hardly my fault, angel. We’re not called demons for nothing. I do my thing, they do their thing, and I call them to order every couple of decades to remind them who’s boss.”

"And the demons who’ve been launching assaults on heaven?" Dean asked.

"There’s a difference between King of the Crossroads and King of Hell, moron. What they hope to achieve by that, though, I have no idea. It’s one of the most asinine plans I’ve heard in six thousand years of bad plans," Crowley replied.

"Um, guys, are we going to do anything about the humans still in the room?" Sam asked, gun still aimed at Dick.

"Mr Roman here was attempting to cheat on his payment, so I’m not against a violent and bloody death," Crowley piped up. He got a look from both Sam and Aziraphale. Dean left those three to deal with Dick, and carefully approached the young woman who’d nearly been the witch’s sacrifice.

"Hey there. I’m Dean." He stopped far enough away that she wouldn’t feel any more threatened than she already had been today.

"Charlie," she replied softly.

"Alrighty, Charlie. I know you’ve had a stressful day, but you’re safe now."

-

Dean might not have been the one who was good at the whole sympathizing thing, but Charlie had calmed herself down enough to inform him that it wasn’t just the supernatural end of things Dick had been cheating his way through.

The redheaded computer whiz showed them what she’d found, fingers flying across the keyboard in a way of which Dean thought Sam might be jealous. And if some of the more personal files happened to make their way to every news platform she could think of at the same time as his business files were sent to the police and the FBI, well, Dean figured that she would be the one who’d have to find a new job because of the man and so was well within her right to enact a little more revenge against him.

They left Dick handcuffed to his heavy mahogany desk for the cops, took Charlie home and left her with a list of names and numbers- including Cas’- just in case she ran into any more trouble, and found a tentative lead on another hunt before Sam and Dean found themselves surrounded by a fairly large group of what had been humans that had appeared out of nowhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve actually read Good Omens now, and while technically the two canons don’t mesh, this is an AU. Also, I just wanted to give them a mention, at least, so that’s really their only appearance.


	8. Chapter 8

They weren’t demons; Dean could tell that right away. He moved between the obvious leader and Sam as he sent a silent call for Cas. His angelic senses were telling him the small group was made up of angels, but his hunter’s instincts were uneasy, and he couldn’t tell why. He waited for the lead angel- who’d taken the form of an older man with graying hair- to talk first, because he looked like the monologuing sort. He didn’t disappoint.

“Dean Winchester. We hoped that you were the Righteous Man, but then you, oh so selfishly, decided that your brother was worth more than the world, regardless of the consequences that you knew would come. Whatever happened to ‘what’s dead should stay dead’? And Sam-”

Dean only sort of listened while he waited for Cas. Yeah, selling his soul hadn’t been the smartest thing he’d ever done, but Sam was safe, so it all worked out in the end. And finding out that angels were, in fact, real and actually pretty helpful when you needed them to be was almost as good. But when Zachariah turned to Sam- who’d moved to stand by Dean instead of behind him when nobody attacked them right away- Dean had had enough of him. He decided that the only reason Cas hadn’t shown up yet was that he was invisible and waiting for the right time, and then stepped forward, flicking his blade into being but leaving it pointed at the ground.

“Listen here, dick, you might outrank me and therefore technically can rag on me all you like and I can’t do anything to stop you, but Sam is human and you have to leave him alone.”

“Dean, Dean, Dean. Little Sammy hasn’t been human since he was six months old.”

A light bulb went off in Dean’s head.

“Right. Because when you screw with somebody’s life, that gives you the right to treat them however you want,” Dean said, sarcasm veiled in mock realization. “My apologies.”

The other angel apparently missed the sarcasm.

“He is, however unwillingly demonic, still human at his core, and therefore still subject to the will of angels,” he replied sardonically.

“First, humans were given this thing called free will, and are therefore not subject to you or anyone else. Second, I’m fairly sure that failing to correct or refute an accusation is pretty much the same as a statement of guilt,” Dean glanced at Sam for confirmation. The once-upon-a-time almost-lawyer nodded. The other angel looked at him in confusion.

“You know, I’d be worried about why none of the other angels cottoned on sooner, but sarcasm isn’t really an angel thing. Is it, Cas?”

Dean’s dramatics were rewarded with a deep, gravelly “No, Dean, it’s not” as the angel to which that voice belonged appeared on the other side of Dean from Sam.

“I didn’t think so. Because if I’d let slip that I’d been working against heaven for at least forty years and someone called me on it, I’d get the hell out of Dodge, pronto, not stand around and brag about it for a while.”

The sound of wings that heralded the appearance of angels sounded, multiplied by enough of Anna’s garrison to surround Zachariah and his rebel angels.

“What Dean means, Zachariah, is that while all angels can tell that Sam has been influenced by demon blood, his exact age at the time of infection could only be known by those directly involved,” Cas said. “Anna’s garrison was the only one assigned to deal with the effects of Azazel’s actions, and you are not part of the Winchester family, thus you could have only been informed of that particular detail by the demon itself, or another traitor within Anna’s garrison.”

“Oh, about that,” Gabriel’s voice interrupted as he appeared silently on Sam’s other side. “We figured it out.”

With no further warning, Uriel was seized by Anna and Samandriel while the rest of the garrison went after Zachariah and his ilk. One of the rebel angels had the bright idea of going after the one human in their midst, but didn’t think it through enough to wait for the archangel standing next to him to go after someone else, and then Gabriel was tossing Sam an angel blade and telling him to have at it before throwing himself into the fray.

Sam and Dean stood back to back as angels fought around them. Some of the angels Dean recognized, and some he didn’t, so the brothers decided with a glance to only go after the ones who attacked them first.

Why Zachariah decided to go after them himself, Dean would never know, but come at them he did, yelling something at them that was indistinguishable over the ruckus caused by the other angels. His attention was focused on Sam long enough for Dean reappear behind him, keeping him in place to give the younger Winchester the chance to stab him in the face.

There was a moment of silence after the last burst of light. Sam was the only one breathing heavily, but the tension even among the angels was almost palpable.

“Apparently ol’ Zach never heard the expression ‘don’t put all your eggs in the same basket,’” Balthazar drawled.

“Or they were smart enough to stay away,” a new voice added- Michael. Anna nodded a hello to the two newly-arrived archangels, and Gabriel huffed out a “hey.”

“Either way, the fact that this went on as long as it did means that we’re going to have to do some reorganizing,” Raphael said.

“Which means your vacation is over, Gabriel. You’ll report to Naomi tomorrow.”

“Yes, fine, whatever,” Gabriel grumbled. “Jerk,” he added under his breath.

Michael raised an eyebrow, then smiled. “Bitch.”

The other angels just looked confused, but Dean turned to Sam and sputtered “Did they just-”

“Yeah, Dean. I think the angels just stole our thing.”


End file.
